Video - Heroic Care: How One Woman Saved a Hippo During Wartime

Of all the horrors of war, a destitute hippo is one of the last sights you would expect to see. Belle the hippo survived the Siege of Leningrad thanks to her caretaker, Yevdokia Dashina.⁠ In 1941, water was turned off throughout the city and Belle's pool was empty, so her skin began to dry out. Every day, Dashina would drag a 40-liter barrel of water from the Neva River and rub the hippo with camphor oil. Eventually, Belle's skin healed, and she could hide underwater during air raids and bombardments.